He sat in the smaller of the two dining rooms and considered this, staring at a portrait of his grandfather, whom he remembered as a vicious old bastard and tightfisted with it. Genes: some you got, some you didn’t. The cook, a homely woman, brought in his appetizer, which looked like half a burger bun topped with salmon and prawns and a dollop of mayonnaise. Allerdyce had just picked up his fork when the telephone rang. Maybe two dozen people knew his home telephone number. More knew his apartment number, and he kept in touch by monitoring the answering machine there morning and evening. He placed his napkin on the brightly polished walnut table and walked over to the small antique bureau-French, seventeenth century, he’d been told-that supported the telephone.
“Yes?” he said.
There was a moment’s pause. He could hear static and echoes on the line, like ghostly distant voices, and then a much clearer one.
“Sir, it’s Dulwater.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I thought I’d let you know the situation here.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I kept watch on the house, but nobody’s been near. So I decided to take a look around.”
Allerdyce smiled. Dulwater was an effective burglar; he’d used the skill several times in the past. Allerdyce wondered what he’d found in Gordon Reeve’s home. “Yes?” he repeated.
“Looks like they’ve moved out for a while. There’s a litter tray and a bunch of cat food, but no cat. Must’ve taken it with them. The cat’s name’s on the food bowl. Bakunin. I checked the name, thought it was a bit strange; turns out the historical Bakunin was an anarchist. There are books on anarchism and philosophy in the bedroom. I think maybe they left in a hurry; the computer was still on in the kid’s bedroom. The telephones were bugged, sure enough-hard to tell who did it; the mikes are standard enough but they are U.S.-sourced.”
Dulwater paused, awaiting praise.
“Anything else?” Allerdyce snapped. He sensed Dulwater was saving something.
“Yes, sir. I found a box of magazines, old copies of something called Mars and Minerva.” Another pause. “It’s the official magazine of the SAS.”
“SAS? That’s a British army unit, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, mostly counter-revolutionary warfare: hostage rescue, deep infiltration behind enemy lines in time of war… I’ve got some stuff from the libraries here.”
Allerdyce studied his fingernails. “No wonder Reeve dealt so diligently with the two personnel. Have you spoken to them?”
“I made sure their boss got the picture. They’ve been kicked out.”
“Good. Is that everything?”
“Not quite. There was some action in France-a journalist was killed. Her name was Marie Villambard. I recognized the name because it was thrown up during our background search on James Reeve. He’d had some contacts with her.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not absolutely certain. Looks like a firefight. A couple of burned-out cars, one of them British. The Villambard woman was shot execution-style, another guy had his face ripped off by a guard dog. Last victim had his throat cut. They found other bloodstains, but no more bodies.”
Allerdyce was quite for a minute. Dulwater knew better than to interrupt the silence. Finally, the old man took a deep breath. “It seems Kosigin has chosen a bad opponent-or a very good one, depending on your point of view.”
“Yes, sir.”
Allerdyce could tell Dulwater didn’t understand. “It seems unlikely Reeve will give up, especially if police trace the car back to him.”
“Always supposing it’s his car,” Dulwater said.
“Yes. I’m trying to think if we have contacts in Paris… I believe we do.”
“I could go down there…”
“No, I don’t think so. What is there to find? We’ll have Paris take care of that side of things for us. So Reeve is ex-army, eh? Some special unit. What some would call a tough nut to crack.”
“There’s just one more thing, sir.”
Allerdyce raised an eyebrow. “More? You’ve been busy, Dulwater.”
“This is conjecture.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the muscle Kosigin’s using, the one from L.A. He’s supposed to be English.”
“So?”
“So, he’s also supposed to have been in the SAS.”
Allerdyce smiled. “That could be interesting. Dulwater, you’ve done remarkably well. I want you back here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Dulwater?”
“Sir?”
“Upgrade your flight to First; the company will pay.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Allerdyce terminated the call and returned to the dining table, but he was too excited to eat right away. He didn’t know where this story was headed, but he knew the outcome would be anything but mundane. Allerdyce could foresee trouble for Kosigin and CWC. They might have need of Alliance’s services again; there might be a favor Kosigin would need. There might well be a favor.
Maybe he’d underestimated Dulwater. He pictured him in his mind-a large man, quiet, not exactly handsome, always well dressed, a discreet individual, reliable-and wondered if there was room for a promotion. More than that, he wondered if there was a necessity. He finished his water and attacked the food. His cook was already appearing, wheeling a trolley on which were three covered silver salvers.
“Is it chicken today?” Allerdyce asked.
“You had chicken yesterday,” she said in her lilting Irish brogue. “It’s fish today.”
“Excellent,” said Jeffrey Allerdyce.
PART SIX. CLOSED DOORS
SIXTEEN
REEVE HAD FLOWN into New York’s JFK. It had been just about the only route open to him at such short notice. The good news was he’d been offered a cheap seat that had been canceled at the last minute. The woman behind the desk had seemed to take pity on him. He put the flight on his credit card. He couldn’t know if Jay and his men-or whoever they worked for-had access to his credit card transactions, or to flight information and passenger lists; if they did, it would take a day or two for his name to filter down to them. And by then he wouldn’t be in New York anymore.
The passport control at JFK had taken a while, lots of questions to be answered. He’d filled in his card on the plane. The officer at passport control stapled half of it back into his passport and stamped it. They’d done that last time too, but no one had checked his passport going home. The officer had asked him the purpose of his visit.
“Business and pleasure,” Reeve said.
The official marked that he could stay three weeks. “Have a nice trip, sir.”
“Thank you.”
And Reeve was back in the United States.
He didn’t know New York, but there was an information booth in the terminal, and they told him how to get into town and that there was another booth offering tourist accommodation along the other end of the concourse.
Reeve changed some money before heading for the bus into Manhattan. The information booth had provided him with a little pocket map, and his hotel was now circled on it in red. So he’d asked for another map, clean this time, and had torn the other one up and thrown it away. He didn’t want anyone knowing which hotel he’d be staying at-if someone so much as looked over his shoulder, it would have been easy with the marked map. He was gearing himself up, ready for whatever they threw at him. And hoping maybe he could throw something at them first.
He was wearing a roomy pair of sneakers he’d bought duty- free at Heathrow. He’d divvied the birdy up into halves, folded each into a torn section of paper towel, and secreted one in either trainer, tucked into the cushioned instep. He’d also bought a clean polo shirt and sports jacket-again on the credit card. He wanted to look like a tourist for the authorities at JFK, but since he didn’t want to look like a tourist on the streets of New York, he’d kept his old clothes so he could change back into them.